Kenrin's Journal: On Returning
I am told that, as we humans grow old and natural death begins to draw near, our memory changes its focus and its savor. The events of only a few hours past start to recede into the gray distance, while the scenes of our childhood and of our early triumphs seem to draw nearer, rich and bright in color, as though newly-minted. I may not feel like I am over 1000 years old, and my vanity prompts me to think that my youthful exuberance belies that number... but it is indisputable that the current date is over a millennium from that of my birth. And, I suppose, I did go through that most reliable indicator of a life that has gone on long enough: death. I never really expected to make it to such a ripe old age, and apparently I didn’t. While such an unorthodox trip through time is hardly ideal, I cannot deny that it has its advantages: I never expected to see what the world would look like in these latter days, and now I have the opportunity to do just that. While I certainly miss the people I knew, I have always believed that the best parts of life consist of talking, learning, and moving forward—and now I have no option but to do exactly that. Indeed, the most unfortunate thing about my untimely demise is that “the pall of death,” as poets call the blackness of oblivion, did its job all too well: I didn’t see a thing. I missed a lot of history, and I don’t even know exactly how I died. Well, I know how, technically: the taste of almonds and wine was still in my mouth when I awoke in these western lands, so presumably somebody fixed me a drink that was filled with, ahem, “cynicism”...but I am not even sure which diplomatic mission took such a murderous turn. I faintly recall that I traveled a lot during my career, so it could have been anywhere... but let’s be honest, shall we? It was probably Dace. It is not very uncommon for a Dacian drink to “disagree with you.” As I said before, though, I do not intend to dwell on my death. I “dwelled” there for long enough. It is far better, instead, to piece together what I can of my early life, before this posthumous existence began. In a way, it is fitting that my early memories of Ad Decimum’s streets and towers appear with such glistening vividness, because I remember the city-state as a practically newborn place, growing with the exuberance common to all young things. My parents, Keetsorian and Hypatia, had been part of the arcane effort to first establish the walls and wards that made the city-state’s independence viable. It is possible that their part in that grand feat was very minor, for we were by no means wealthy or influential, but (from the perspective of my childhood) they seemed to be mighty spell-wrights: I remember looking at the enormous stones of the outer walls and imagining my parents’ wrestling such boulders through the air with their eldritch powers. Fortunately, even if they were not the mighty archmagi of my childhood fantasies, their spellcraft did run in the family, for at an early age I showed an aptitude for magic. Now, in the atmosphere of expansion and possibility that hovered in the air of early Ad Decimum, I got the impression that I could do anything I wanted with my life... as long as magic was involved. And I did study magic, of course, with fairly impressive results—but I was always far more interested in talking to people. At first, my parents thought that I was just lazy, that I was interested only in joking around with my friends. A few weeks before my 11th birthday, though, unbeknownst to me, they pooled their magical resources and followed me around with an invisible scrying sensor as I skipped some of my classes. And they found out the sordid truth: I was interviewing people. I would talk to anyone—even entirely mundane people, with no trace of magical talent at all—simply because I wanted to learn the rhythms of their speech, to understand their perspective on the grand city-state I called home. In a way, I saw (and still see) social skills as a kind of magic. If you know the right words, gestures, and facial expressions, and if you can follow the right leylines of questioning, you can unlock the most magical resource of all: other people. Yes, I know that sounds cheesy. For 10-year-old Kenrin, though, that cheesy line was an open window with the breeze blowing through. It was the truth, and, even better, it was a truth that my parents didn’t know about. I kept sneaking out to work on my ability to connect with people, thinking I was getting away with something, and incidentally making a lot of friends in the city. When my 11th birthday came around, though, my parents sat me down and explained that they had been scrying my little “chatting missions,” as I mentally referred to them. At first, they were angry with me, but we lived in Ad Decimum, the greatest city on the Expanse, and some of its brilliance must have seeped into their approach to parenting. They said that I could continue with my non-magical efforts, as long as I could make something of those efforts. They told me that nothing important comes from half-measures; they said that if I wanted to continue working on something as mundane as conversation, I was going to have to turn it into work rather than play. I would begin training as a diplomat: I would learn languages and cultures, I would learn politics, and I would start actively working for the High Council in whatever position I could get, as soon as possible. I think they were trying to scare me away from my non-magical efforts; they thought that if I began considering diplomacy to be work, I would stop loving it and return to the magical fold. At this point in the story, it would be stylish and slick for me to say, “that really blew up in their faces”—but, in all honesty, they came around. They beamed with legitimate pride when I became a Junior Ambassador to Magical Universities seven years later, and they told “the Triskelion story” over and over to their friends. (Due to my popularity and growing stature in local politics, I got to adjudicate one year’s Finals game of Triskelion, introducing the teams to the crowd and personally levitating the ball to start the match. If I have had any better days in my life, death has erased them from my memory.) Of course, I finished my studies in Sorcery as well, so they didn’t have to see my political career as a “consolation prize” for a lack of real talent. When I started traveling to do legitimate inter-state diplomacy, they were both proud and worried, as any good parents would be. Now, over 900 years of death later, I think it’s fair to say that their worries were justified. Those early days of hope and promise, after all, are all I can remember clearly. Certain later fragments stick in my mind—parts of a glorious trip to the Eirie Isles, for instance, are apparently indelible, and I seem to have memorized several famous Decimal poems, although I cannot remember the process of committing them to memory. I have to hope that my parents lived out their lives as happily as they could, despite the loss of their only child, since my last memory of them is of their standing on a stone dock in the dusk, waving with magelight-glowing hands as my boat pulled away into the inexorable tide. Their faces were mostly happy, with just a faint undercurrent of fear. Now, I find myself with much the same expression on my face, since I have been rescued from death for no reason I can understand, I have been given dreams that swirl with undecipherable meaning, and I have the glorious but uncanny opportunity to explore a changed world. I can only hope that the tides of fate have dredged me back up for a reason—or, if not, that I can at least manage to talk my way out of a second death.